Report reveals toxic working atmosphere at Destiny studio Bungie

Bungie seems to be carrying around a whole host of problems. For one thing, fans of the US-based developer are overly vocal and sensitive to conceptual missteps the company regularly commits when updating and expanding their live service games. On the other hand, the company's employees also appear to be under powerful internal pressure, as revealed by frightening insights into the toxic working atmosphere at the Destiny studio that came to light a few days ago.

IGN has spoken to a small section of the staff, who give evidence of angry managers taking out their frustration of the company's harsh reception by fans on staff. The interview cites countless instances of racist, sexist and otherwise intolerant remarks that individuals have to endure because Bungie does not view all employees equally. Some colleagues have been discriminated against or prevented from advancing in their careers on hair-raising grounds.

A part of the team of developers had turned to both the human resources department and the managing director Pete Parsons because of the intolerable way of working with a manager, but without success. According to IGN, the company could only be persuaded to take necessary steps by threatening a collective wave of dismissals of those involved. While the studio has made progress on this front over the past two years, the years since the Microsoft split are said to have been exceedingly hard and challenging for all involved.

We suggest you take in all the finer details of this appalling report to get at least a rough idea of how terrible the work at Bungie must have been over the years.

Bungie has since responded to these allegations with a letter from the CEO. Parsons confirms that the company has allowed problematic decision-makers to linger too long in their roles. He claims that the executive suite was unaware of many of the abuse allegations revealed in the IGN article prior to its publication. The CEO then speaks out in favour of inclusion for minorities and follows this up by describing various initiatives that he claims has made Bungie a better place to work in recent years.

At the same time, Parsons admits that these efforts came too late, partly because he personally did not react quickly enough at the time. According to his own statements, he realised that "there was still a lot of work to be done" at the studio. Incidentally, according to the internal sources IGN spoke to, this was also the view of the HR department. They vehemently advised employees to put in more effort in order to come to terms with the unbearable daily work under toxic power structures.